This Christmas we've been spared any film set in Santa Claus's Lapland toy factory starring Tim Allen as a jovial Santa and Will Ferrell as a resentful elf. Nor have we had imposed upon us one of those sentimental Run of the Moulin Scrooge fables of cynics and workaholics converted during yuletide celebrations. And instead of the usual half-dozen tales of troubled reunions that end up in grisly assertions of family values, we've had just Four Christmases, though it's a tale told four times over. Instead we've had two cinematic gifts for the holidays, movies that could be enjoyed in any season by the whole family, though not perhaps the very youngest. Both are British, feature some of our finest actors, touch affectingly on relationships between fathers and sons and fathers and daughters without getting unduly sentimental, and they have literate scripts. They move from everyday reality into realms of fantasy and don't constantly allude to popular Hollywood films. Each features in a supporting role an outsize performance as a lovable eccentric by an actor who has been dubbed a national treasure - Peter O'Toole in Dean Spanley, Helen Mirren in Inkheart.

Dean Spanley is an Anglo-New Zealand co-production developed from a novella written in the 1930s by Lord Dunsany, an Irish writer interested in the occult, and adapted by the Scottish novelist Alan Sharp, best known for his scripts for Hollywood genre movies, Ulzana's Raid, Night Moves and Rob Roy among them. Directed by the New Zealand film-maker Toa Fraser and sensitively lit by Leon Narbey, it's set in Edwardian England immediately after the Boer War. The elderly, self-centred widower Horatio Fisk (Peter O'Toole) cannot come to terms with his elder son's death in the war and the subsequent demise of his grieving wife. His other son, the dedicated Henslowe (Jeremy Northam), seeks to console him but can't win his love. On an outing to pass an idle afternoon, they attend a lecture by an Indian swami on 'The Transmigration of Souls', where the question of dogs being reincarnated as humans arises. There they meet Dean Spanley (Sam Neill), a dignified Trollopian cleric, and a crafty Australian businessman, Wrather (Bryan Brown). The scene is packed with incidental detail, one train of which leads to Henslowe becoming fascinated with Spanley whom he lures with bottles of a rare imperial Tokay (obtained from Wrather) to a series of dinners. Their repasts recall the wonderful encounter between Alec Guinness and Dennis Price in Kind Hearts and Coronets. They culminate in the revelation that, when plied with Tokay, Spanley is the reincarnation of a Victorian spaniel called Wag, and ultimately the O'Toole character re-examines his past, challenges his natural scepticism, and establishes a new relationship with his son. This is a delightful, oddly moving film, immaculately acted, carefully skirting whimsy, and nicely located in its period. It goes far beyond those wacky Disney comedies in which humans find themselves occupying the bodies of cats and dogs.